tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22921684.post7050867275295476685..comments2023-05-12T08:13:38.639+01:00Comments on The Storage Architect: Developing a Tiering StrategyChris M Evanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05633427140097100466noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22921684.post-44024504286346091112007-03-24T05:39:00.000+00:002007-03-24T05:39:00.000+00:00Great article and a topic that is top of my mind r...Great article and a topic that is top of my mind right now. In my case, I have selected the technology tiers and am now working out how to "advertise" them effectively to our internal business units so they will want to use them.<BR/><BR/>We created our tiers by collecting and classifying the many thousands of business applications running across the environment. It was fortuitous that the information we needed for this analysis was actually collected as part of a Disaster Recovery remediation program that has swept through before this round of storage cosnolidation. We started the analysis with the hope of trying to collect our applications together into a maximum of 6 groups with common storage requirements. As it turned out, the groups turned into more like 4 or 5. We then created 4 "classes" of storage that had attributes matching these application requirements groupings.<BR/><BR/>Now, the key is to get the business put all new data in the right class and reach the "tipping point" where they beg us to move existing data to the right tier. The former is simpler than the latter as it is about education, communication and price. The migration screams $$$'s in order to mitigate the risk of business disruption. So, I start with the former and aim for the "tipping point" where the risk and cost to migrate doesn't appear so big to any of us.<BR/><BR/>The Service Catalog will be the primary forum, the question is what information is included and how is it represented. A table displaying the classes with ranges of targets for attributes like availability, performance etc is an obvious start. The real winner in my mind is to align examples of "headline" applications with the storage classes. These "headliners" are the applications everyone knows like exchange and desktop file sharing, but also the highly publicised internal applications that exist in every business like "Critical_External_Customer_Application_X".<BR/><BR/>Would be great to hear your thoughts on this approach and if you have any recommendations on how to make it a success.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07406931940763050605noreply@blogger.com